Message centre call handling

ABSTRACT

A text message application server capable of prioritising incoming SMS messages and passing them to operators for a response, the operators interacting with the application server via the internet. The application server can handle multiple different called numbers, or messages with different identifying words in the message and can prioritise the messages on the basis of the message content.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention generally relates to call centres for handling callsgenerated in text, multi-media or other message formats.

More particularly the invention relates to remotely handling calls indistributed call centres for text, email, multi-media or other messages.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

It is known to provide centres for handling voice calls.

Call centres of this type may be used in various crisis managementroles, for instance as help lines for various “at risk” groups. In suchan environment it is important that there is continuity of contact witha caller, and that a caller who has been identified as posing apotential problem be responded to as quickly as possible.

Text messaging is a call to immediate action unlike emails which areregarded as correspondence and may require a considered response. Itposes particular difficulties in a crisis management role in terms ofidentifying the caller and relating an urgent message to the caller'sprior messages. There is a need to provide continuity of messagehandling in which the same person handles calls from a single caller asa chat operation, and thus since each call is likely to be handled by adifferent operator, the lack of continuity slows the call handling down.

For example there is a need to separate calls (particularly textmessages) which are made by two or more persons sharing a singletelephone, whether this is a landline telephone or a mobile telephone.Such sharing is becoming common and some method of differentiating twousers, one of whom may be at risk, would be a preferred option.

It is proposed to provide a system for call handling which overcomesthese shortcomings.

It will be clearly understood that, although publications may be arereferred to herein, this reference does not constitute an admission thatany of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in theart, in New Zealand or in any other country.

It is acknowledged that the term ‘comprise’ may, under varyingjurisdictions, be attributed with either an exclusive or an inclusivemeaning. For the purpose of this specification, and unless otherwisenoted, the term ‘comprise’ shall have an inclusive meaning—i.e. that itwill be taken to mean an inclusion of not only the listed components itdirectly references, but also other non-specified components orelements. This rationale will also be used when the'term ‘comprised’ or‘comprising’ is used in relation to one or more steps in a method orprocess.

OBJECT OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a solution to this and other problemswhich offers advantages over the prior art or which will at leastprovide the public with a useful choice.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In one embodiment the invention consists in a SMS or MMS message callcentre for responding to digitally recorded messages received fromcallers and comprising:

-   -   a message recording database recording at least the called        number, the calling number, the message, and the message status,    -   a message parser identifying the messages on the basis of at        least the called number and the presence or absence of at least        one known text string in the message,    -   a message prioritiser, prioritising messages for attention by an        operator on the basis of the parsed results and any previous        calls from the same called number or caller,    -   a message relayer, relaying messages to the operator for reply        to the message.

Preferably a personal identifier for the caller is recorded.

Preferably the message parser identifies messages as relating toseparate message queues on the basis of at least one of the callednumber, the personal identifier or the message content.

Preferably a queue server allocates operators to message queues.

Preferably the message parser recognises character patterns in themessage for storage with the message in the message recording database.

Preferably the character pattern recognised is that of a telephonenumber.

Preferably the message relayer provides an alert if a reply has notissued within a set time.

Preferably messages to be sent are sent via a method chosen on a costbasis.

Preferably an automatic message may be sent to indicate when the calleris advancing in the reply queue.

Preferably an automatic call may be sent on the basis of the parsedmessage content.

Preferably the call centre handles and collates against a single callermessages in SMS, MMS, email and telephone formats.

In a further embodiment the invention consists in a method of groupingincoming messages to an SMS or MMS message call centre by:

grouping incoming messages from a caller to an SMS or MMS message centreby content and/or dialled number or identified caller and additionallygrouping the incoming messages on the basis of the last operatorresponding to a message from that particular caller,making messages available to responding operators on the basis of saidcontent and/or dialled number or identified caller,providing a return message to the caller from a responding operator.

Preferably the separated messages are weighted in dependence on thenumber of messages from the same caller previously responded to by aparticular operator.

Preferably the weighting of each grouped message is translated into themaximum time a message awaiting a response will be queued for aparticular operator.

Preferably the grouped messages are allocated to operators on the basisof perceived priority.

Preferably the text message application server is capable ofprioritising incoming SMS messages and passing them to operators for aresponse, with the operators being able to interact with the applicationserver via the internet or via a local area network. The applicationserver can handle multiple different called numbers or messages withdifferent identifying words in the message and can prioritise themessages on the basis of the message content.

Preferably the call centre also handles and collates against a singlecaller messages in SMS, MMS, email and telephone formats.

In another aspect the invention provides a method of grouping incomingmessages to an SMS or MMS message call centre by:

-   -   grouping incoming messages from a caller to an SMS or MMS        message centre by content and/or dialled number or identified        caller and additionally grouping the incoming messages on the        basis of the last operator responding to a message from that        particular caller,    -   making messages available to responding operators on the basis        of said content and/or dialled number or identified caller,    -   providing a return message to the caller from a responding        operator.

Preferably the method allows weighting of the separated messages independence on the number of messages from the same caller previouslyresponded to by a particular operator.

Preferably the method provides for translating the weighting of eachgrouped message into the maximum time a message awaiting a response willbe queued for a particular operator.

Preferably the method provides for allocating the grouped messages tooperators on the basis of perceived priority.

Preferably the method provides for operator interaction with the centrevia the internet, or a local area network.

These and other features of as well as advantages which characterise thepresent invention will be apparent upon reading of the followingdetailed description and review of the associated drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a view of the hardware elements of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram of the initial storage of an incoming message.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram of the prioritisation and handling of amessage.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of an operators handling of a message.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of a supervisor's allocation and overseeingmessages.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of a message sending method.

FIG. 7 shows a typical administrator screen with various setup data.

FIG. 8 shows an operator screen for responding to email messages.

FIG. 9 shows an operator screen for responding to text messages.

FIG. 10 shows an operator screen for responding to telephone messages.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to FIG. 1 a messaging system including a call centre isshown in which SMS or other messages from mobile phones such as 101, 102are lodged through a message server 104 to an application server 105where the messages are saved in a database 106. Typically the databasestores the message, the calling number, the message status and themessage timestamp, although other data relating to the message may beheld. In particular data indicating the person actually lodging the callis a preferred item. Because a call may be lodged from a single phone bymore than one person it may be that a single telephone number isassociated with more than one person. Were the call centre to assumethat these persons were the same the potential for confusion is present,and, where one of them is a person whom the call centre is treating as“at risk” there exists a potential for disaster.

Thus it is preferred that some attempt is made firstly to make anoperator aware that more than one caller uses this number and therebyprompt the operators dealing with a caller to elicit a name or otheridentifier each time a call series is initiated.

The database may be set to issue a default reply message to a caller toindicate that the call was received and will be individually respondedto as soon as possible. Such calls may be individualised by detectingthe number called and any keywords in the message in known manner.

Call centre operators working variously through computer 110 withwireless router 109, and computers such as 111, 112 connected viainternet 108 to web server 107 can work on and answer the messages.

As shown in FIG. 2 the application server 105 receives an incoming SMSor similar message at 201 and via a reverse query attempts to determinethe actual physical location of the message origination at 202 beforestoring the information at 203. The information supplied to the messageserver with the message is normally sufficient to identify theoriginating message service provider and potentially the actual messageorigin, though the service provider may restrict this information. Thisinformation is used in a least cost algorithm for any return messages.

Calls are placed for processing by an operator according to the methodshown in FIG. 3 where firstly any records marked as unactioned areretrieved from the database at 301 and then grouped in queues at 302 byan included keyword or by the number which was called.

Grouping by keyword may be carried out by parsing the message lookingeither for an initial keyword or “special” words, such as “HELP” or“HLP”, or by checking the whole of the message for one of a number ofwords such as “SUICIDE” or variants.

Such grouping allows the prioritisation of messages which have specialwords in them, or the separation of messages on different subjects, ormessages sent to ostensibly different numbers which are actually handledby one call centre. Operators may be dedicated to particular groups ormay separately handle the messages from several different groups. One ormore groups may be treated as a single queue so that messages are queuedin a rational manner for operators. In this way the messages for acomparatively low traffic customer may be handled on a part time basisby a single operator or may be diverted to a single dedicated operator.

At 303 the message is examined for any words or character patterns whichmay be useful in processing the call. Thus for instance a web addressURL, a telephone number, an email address may all be recognised by apattern recognition processor. Thus for instance any telephone numbermay be found by a regular expression processor using a regexp expressionsuch aŝ([\(]{1}[0-9]{3}[\)]{1}[\.∥\-]{0,1}|̂[0-9]{3}[\.|\-|]?)?[0-9]{3}(\.|\-|)?[0-9]{4}$.Any such patterns found are preferably stored in a database forassociation with the message and presented to the operator together withthe message.

Once the calls are grouped and have any “special” words noted they aresubjected to a prioritisation step in which it is determined whetherthat caller is already in a “chat” session with a particular operator.At 304 it is determined if there are several recent calls and repliesfrom one operator, here named as a “thread”, and if so the call ismarked at 305 as tightly associated with that operator if that operatoris still taking messages from that group, typically by allocating a lownumbered association attribute and the operator's identification number.If there is no “current” thread the history is checked at 306 to see ifthere are previous calls in any thread by this caller in the particulargroup. If so the message is associated at 307 with the previous operatorof the last call if that operator is on duty and available to the group.

If this check has no result a comparison at 308 checks if the caller hasprevious threads in another group, and if the operator from that groupis on duty and servicing the current group, the operator will be looselyassociated at 309 with the message. Failing this a new thread is startedat 310 and the call allocated to the first free operator in the group at311. The grouped and prioritised messages are then placed in a queue at312 with an indicated of the allocated operator.

When an operator chooses a message for action the message is marked asbeing under action and becomes unavailable to others, but a timer is setat 314, and should this timing process elapse with no change in thestatus of the message as detected at 315, the message will bereallocated to another operator at 317 and the “in action” statusremoved. Preferably the screen of the initial operator will be updatedto indicate this if still connected.

Similarly, if a message is in the queue and unactioned at a waiting timemeasured at 316, it will again be allocated to the first free operatorrather than to a particular operator. The waiting time at either ofthese steps may be varied in dependence on whether the coupling to theoperator is tight or loose and whether the priority is high or low, sothat a loose coupling or a high priority is more likely to bere-allocated to another operator.

The system for prioritising the messages may additionally be sensitiveto words other than designated keywords, for instance it could be set todetect the word “suicide” in the message and provide a listing which hasan indication that this message has a higher priority than a normalmessage, similarly some keywords being used by companies which have paida premium may have a higher priority rating than those used by others.

Moving now to consider FIG. 4 in which the interaction of the operatorand the message is considered, it should be remembered that thepreferred method of interaction is via the internet, and that theinternet is essentially stateless, that is, once information has beendownloaded to a screen the screen is no longer connected to the sourceof that information and any interaction relies on data held within thescreen and sent back with any response.

As FIG. 3 shows an operator browses to the call centre site and asindicated at 401 logs in using a user name and password. During the endof the login process a cookie verifying the user as logged in, and witha typical 10 minute life, is stored in the temporary internet cache.When the login is verified the operator is presented with a screen asshown at FIG. 7 representing the queue for that particular operator asindicated at 402. The operator selects the first message for processingat 403, typically by clicking on it as a link, and the message, plus anyother previous messages and replies in the thread, is relayed via theinternet and presented to the operator as at 404. Any “special” wordspreviously detected in the message such as telephone numbers or emailaddresses are also presented for viewing at the same time. Also at thistime the message is marked in the database as under action by thatoperator.

The operator can view any previous calls in, the thread and may draft areply which is then relayed via the internet to the call centre andstored in the database prior to sending it, at which point the originalmessage is marked as actioned. The operator can then action the nextmessage in the queue. Opportunity is provided at this stage for theoperator to take a timeout, as at 406 where an indication 407 isreturned to the call centre web server that the operator will beunavailable for some minutes. Optionally the operator may, as at 408,consider a logout and if so logs out from the site, at the same timesending an indication to the web server that the operator is no longerservicing messages.

As already indicated, if the operator does not respond to a messagewithin a specified time of downloading the message it will be marked asreallocated at the call centre. Preferably the logged in user webbrowser session for this reason has a “keep alive” process, typicallyutilising a small piece of JavaScript code which interrogates the callcentre web server every minute or less merely to indicate that the webconnection is still alive, and preferably indicating which message theoperator is working on. The queue may also typically refresh at thistime.

FIG. 5 shows the process followed by a supervisor who, having logged inat 501 chooses at 502 one or more groups to supervise, and is able to,if desired, alter the timeouts for the various associated prioritylevels of the messages at 503. The supervisor may also allocate orreallocate operators to the groups as the operators log in or out andthe length of the queued messages in each group increases or decreases.The supervisor may also monitor the timeout alarms from the process ofFIG. 3 so that the responsiveness of the operators can be monitored, andon the basis of the timeouts the supervisor may choose to reallocateoperator to a queue or messages to a queue as at 506. Typically thesupervisor has a view of the various queue names, the number of messagesin each queue, the waiting time of each queue and the number ofoperators currently logged in and servicing each queue.

While responding to a call an operator may take notes of any sort andembed them in a “notes” field associated with the call. These notes willbe visible with the caller's messages and the when a thread is beingprocessed.

There may additionally be provision for different operators to assumedifferent roles with differing permissions, for instance there may be anoperator role which allows the operator to initiate an SMS message,while the normal operator role only permits the operator to reply to anexisting message.

Provision may also be made for different supervisor roles, with asupervisor being limited in the groups which they can view and theoperators they may select to process those groups.

FIG. 6 shows the choice of location for issuing each reply message. Thephysical location of the caller is retrieved from the database at 601and the type of message and the location are retrieved from lookup tablein the database at 602, 603 to establish a least cost algorithm forsending the message. The message may then be sent via a remote internetSMS message disseminator, a local cell phone site, an embedded cellphone chip, or by some other means. Providing disparate ways of sendinga call also allows such a call centre to continue operation even if someof the connections are not available or otherwise occupied.

Normally the message header sent with the return message to the calleris set to match the number called by the caller, so that it appears thatthe message is issuing from the number originally called rather than thenumber of a generic message centre.

Setup of operators, and other functions, may be controlled from an editscreen such as that shown at FIG. 7. A screen 700 contains a scrollablelist of operators 701 which may be added to at 702, and edited, markedas ACTIVE or INACTIVE by an edit control in portion 701.

The setup may also control which words appearing in a message may raisean alert for an operator and at 703 is shown the list of such words andthe facility to add more at 704. The occurrence of any of these words inthe messages received may be counted and shown in conjunction with theword as illustrated. The detection of certain of these words may cause amessage to be placed in a specific queue for a specific set of operatorswith expertise in the subject in question.

The screen shown also allows at 705 the creation of actions which can beassociated with the messages. These are typically actions taken byoperators and include items such as ‘Discussion only”, “Referred tocounsellor”, “Ambulance sent”. These are stored in conjunction with themessage and assist in providing information on the current status of aninteraction with a caller. Item 706 denotes various message texts whichcan be sent to message senders when circumstances provide, for instancethey may include a message to send to those whose message have just beenreceived; a message for those who have been waiting for an answer formore than a specific time; a message for those who have never used themessage service before; a message when no service is currentlyavailable.

Also provided may be messages to be sent in response to certain keywordsas shown at 707 and added at 708. This may allow the automatic sendingof a reassuring message or a request as to whether the caller willreceive a telephone call from a counsellor where, for instance, the word“suicide” is found in an incoming message.

FIG. 8 shows an operator screen associated with handling incoming emailmessages. It is assumed that the operator has opened an email from amessage queue, and that the email address has been corresponded withbefore. At 801 is the known information on the emailer, which in thisinstance is the email address only. On occasion more information may beknown and it may be possible to cross-correlate an email address with aphone number or even with a street or postal address. Such across-correlation will allow the amalgamation of the different messagetypes from that person.

Any such cross-correlation may be carried out either manually, or by anautomatic search which attempts to group like phone numbers, emailaddresses, street addresses or other identifiers and bring these to theattention of an operator or supervisor for resolution. The resolutionmay be the allocation of a common client identifier to all theoccurrences found.

Additionally because it is also possible to have one or more callersoriginating messages from the same message source, such as a mobilephone, it is important to attempt to correlate the messages and callersregardless of the contact method or calling number or address. Toachieve this there must be a realisation by the operator that the calleris not the same caller as was previously calling from the same number oraddress. This realisation may be assisted by detection of the languagestructure used in a message, for instance the use of differentabbreviations in a text message from those previously appearing inearlier threads or a different sentence form factor (sentence lengthversus word length) in an email message. Once an operator realises thatthere is more than one caller with the same number or address thedifferent callers may be asked to include a code word in their messagesso that the messages can be easily differentiated. Each future call fromsuch a number or address will first be checked for code words andfailing this will be flagged to indicate the possibility that the callmay be from a different person, leaving the operator to determine who isactually calling and which call session profile should be shown.

In the present case only the email address shown at 802 is known, andthe list of previous sessions at 805 shows some of the availableprevious sessions. The screen at 807 shows the last of the previousemails in the current session with a new email at 806, sendable whenlink button 808 is clicked. Section 803 of the screen allows the entryof notes to the session, in particular three optional choice list boxeswhich may allow the quick entry of the caller situation, the caller'sissues, and the counsellor or operator actions.

FIG. 9 shows the SMS version of the same screen with an indication at901 that there are two text sessions open, the lower being the activeone, and with the client details at 902, this time indicating additionaldetails gleaned from several sessions. Text messages from the currentsession appear at 904, the most recent at 903, and details of pastsessions at 906. A summary of all the session notes is shown in popup907 and may be amended if desired by the operator. An operator may havemany text sessions open at any one time at 901 and preferably has somemeans of indicating which session is currently active and which othersessions have an incoming message waiting, and which of these messagesor sessions have been nominated as priority sessions because of eitherthe past priority of a caller or the priority allocated to an incomingmessage on the basis of the text of the message.

The various priorities may be indicated by the on-screen colour so thatan urgent message may have a red background, a priority message a yellowbackground.

FIG. 10 shows the same interactive screen, but this time when used fortelephone calls. In this case the client details at 1001 shows only thetelephone number, with the details on when this particular call startedat 1002, and of previous phone sessions at 1003. Popup 1004 shows thesession history of previous contacts with this client and shows thatthere are both telephone and text sessions in the past. If it has beenestablished that this client had also called the call centre using anemail then the client identifier of the email session could be mergedwith the client identifier for the text and phone sessions, thusproviding a more coherent record of the interactions with the client.

It is to be understood that even though numerous characteristics andadvantages of the various embodiments of the present invention have beenset forth in the foregoing description, together with details of thestructure and functioning of various embodiments of the invention, thisdisclosure is illustrative only, and changes may be made in detail solong as the functioning of the invention is not adversely affected. Forexample the particular elements of the call centre application may varydependent on the particular application for which it is used withoutvariation in the spirit and scope of the present invention.

In addition, although the preferred embodiments described herein aredirected to a call centre for use in an SMS or MMS messaging system, itwill be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the teachings ofthe present invention can be applied to other systems such as callcentres for voice messages, without departing from the scope and spiritof the present invention.

1. An SMS or MMS message call centre for responding to digitallyrecorded messages received from callers and comprising: a messagerecording database recording at least the called number, the callingnumber, the message, and the message status, a message parseridentifying the messages on the basis of at least the called number andthe presence or absence of at least one known text string in themessage, a message prioritiser, prioritising messages for attention byan operator on the basis of the parsed results and any previous callsfrom the same called number or caller, a message relayer, relayingmessages to the operator for reply to the message.
 2. A message callcentre as claimed in claim 1 wherein a personal identifier for thecaller is recorded.
 3. A message call centre as claimed in claim 2wherein the message parser identifies messages as relating to separatemessage queues on the basis of at least one of the called number, thepersonal identifier or the message content.
 4. A message call centre asclaimed in claim 3 wherein a queue server allocates operators to messagequeues.
 5. A message call centre as claimed in claim 1 wherein themessage parser recognises character patterns in the message for storagewith the message in the message recording database.
 6. A message callcentre as claimed in claim 2 wherein the character pattern recognised isthat of a telephone number.
 7. A message call centre as claimed in claim1 wherein the message relayer provides an alert if a reply has notissued within a set time.
 8. A message call centre as claimed in claim 1wherein messages to be sent are sent via a method chosen on a costbasis.
 9. A message call centre as claimed in claim 1 wherein anautomatic message may be sent to indicate when the caller is advancingin the reply queue.
 10. A message call centre as claimed in claim 1where an automatic call may be sent on the basis of the parsed messagecontent.